


Farewell

by Matilde



Category: Villette - Brontë
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Victorian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 12:44:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Matilde/pseuds/Matilde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucy Snowe, now an old woman, has finished writing her memoirs. It's a cool, dark November day; she decides to go for a walk, and enjoy the last of fall's colours. Doing so, she brings a mental closure to her reminiscences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Farewell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Laylapalooza](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylapalooza/gifts).



_Farewell_.

With her right hand, Lucy Snowe reached out for her ink-stained rag; as she wiped her quill and set it down, her eyes remained fixed on the last word it had traced.

It was the one word she had known she would use – the one single detail she had planned from the very beginning, from the moment she had sat before this same oak desk and written the first sentence. Everything else, at that point, had merely existed as the vaguest of notions. A rudimentary mental outline, and the hope that her memory would provide her with the substance that was to fill its chapters accordingly.

She picked up her blotter and applied it, briefly; then she took the page and placed it at the top of a pile comprising several hundreds of its companions. Her work, she reflected, was not quite done yet. There remained minor corrections to be made, as well as a clean copy which she would store in a safe place, to be discovered solely upon her death – an occurrence closely forthcoming, she believed; such was the reason why she had pressed herself to conduct the venture as swiftly as she might. Yet she did feel she could indulge in putting the matter aside for the rest of the day. She had, after all, just given a final word to her final chapter. For six months, she had laboured under her own harsh command. She deserved an afternoon’s respite.

She rose, with some difficulty, and paced to the large clock in the corner of her bedroom’s window. It was nearly half past three; in a mere two hours, the night would have fallen. The park’s gates would be closed. The sky was already rather ominous, she noted, with its low bank of grey clouds. Her winter cloak was resting on a tall coat-hanger, near the door. She seized it, wrapped it around her frail shoulders, and wandered out.

On her way down the house’s narrow staircase, she passed the main classroom; upon hearing Mademoiselle Collet’s voice – though she could not discern her words – she was glad to note the studious silence which appeared to greet it. Mademoiselle Collet was quite young, younger than Lucy had been when she had first been made to stand before an unruly classe, and she sometimes lacked the poise that brought forth authority. Today, however, she had obviously prevailed.

Lucy herself had long since retired from teaching. There had come a time when age’s ever-growing fatigue had robbed her – almost overnight, it seemed now – of her ability to meet the demands of her thirty or forty boisterous _élèves_. Although she had refused to yield until her endurance had reached its ultimate limits, she did not regret the strain of those days, she reflected, resuming her path down to the front entrance. She had kept her position as the school’s headmistress, and was more than sufficiently busy with the concerns (either related to money, staff or discipline) which befell her almost daily. Besides, within the last months she had sacrificed many daytime hours to the redaction of her memoirs – these spare interludes were but a recent privilege, which she had only obtained upon passing on her teaching charge to more resistant successors.

But the years had been fast.

So very fast.

A few minutes earlier she’d been immersed in her memories – submerged, even. Entirely taken. And now, perhaps as a lingering effect of her reminiscences, she found herself swayed by a temporary confusion. Who was she? Was she really this old woman, on her pilgrimage’s last mile – was it hers, this knotty, wrinkly hand she spied on the stairway’s railing? Was she not still, somewhere deep within, the Lucy Snowe of her own retrospective writings? The prudent, inexperienced twenty-four year-old…

‘Vous sortez, mademoiselle?’ A voice stopped her in the hall, as she mechanically put on her scarf and gloves. It was Madame Fourneaux, the housekeeper. Lucy, with her hair white under her white bonnet, recoiled, as if caught breaking a rule. Within seconds, though, she had remembered herself, along with the five full decades that stood between this day and that of Madame Beck’s merciless surveillance. Madame Fourneaux was her employee, and at the very least fifteen years her junior.

‘Oui,’ she answered, ‘je sors me promener. Je reviendrai avant la nuit.’

‘Bien, mademoiselle.’ A short pause. ‘N’oubliez pas votre canne!’

Lucy’s walking stick rested against the door; indeed, she had almost forgotten it. She took it, and went out.

The Faubourg Clotilde was a busy street. She hurried through it to the best of her possibilities; still, she was frustrated by her weak legs and trembling knees. Her cane slowed her. Her intellect had always been quicker than her body, and age regularly worsened the impression – along with her impatience. She had once possessed such insuperable endurance, she recalled. Such trials she had withstood, retaining most – if not all – of her stoicism (Diogenes… her favourite amongst the former Miss Fanshawe’s playful pet names for her; in truth, the sole one she could tolerate, although she had never indulged in admitting it to Ginevra). Nights of waiting. Days of silence. Uncertainty. Today she was an old woman; she could no longer walk quite as quickly as she wished; and that small frustration sufficed to challenge her temper.

She longed for the park. She wanted its quiet alleys. She yearned for the sight of the fall and its univocal, uncomplicated beauty. The trees had grown yellow, yet they retained their leaves. Now was the single week in nature’s seasonal cycle when one might walk under that canopy of gold; for Lucy, persuaded as she was that this very autumn would be her last on earth, the spectacle had taken on unique significance.

As she strode, pushing her strength, she continued to reflect upon that which she’d just achieved. _Farewell_. The last word.

She had not sought to write the story of her life, from birth to old age; instead she had chosen to focus on its most remarkable, if not happiest, fraction – that which had witnessed the growth and shaping of her mind, in turn excruciating and exhilarating.

What years of excess they had been! For all who knew her, the kind and wretched souls alike, she had simply been Lucy Snowe, the English teacher of the Rue Fossette. She had sewed for herself a shadow’s dress, and day after day she had worn it, ever silent. No-one had suspected the confusion she concealed, betrayed solely by one or two short fits of rebellion when the ache happened to rise beyond what she could bear (‘My heart will break!’, she had once cried. The keen determination lived still, so easily invoked. It was a mighty recollection. To call it ‘vivid’ would have been diminishing; it was _alive_, simply. At that moment, she had resisted; she had fought; the thrill had never quite left her). No-one had suspected her rage, the intricate complexities of her torment, her guilt for her failure to shine in a role she despised. No-one had cared to imagine how she had loathed herself for not being a Paulina Home, pricking her fingers as she embroidered her father’s handkerchief, and lisping at seventeen; or a Ginevra Fanshawe, laughing at the hearts she broke, always so cheerful in her remorseless selfishness.

No-one – or rather, none _but _one.

One had seen the furnace, the sweltering lava beneath the grey stillness. And he had died.

As the thought occurred to her, bringing along its usual share of distress, Lucy reached the park at last. She stopped between the iron gates for a few seconds – a minute, maybe; she needed to catch her breath. She took the chance to enjoy a global view of the place. The trees were the exact golden colour she had hoped for; their leaves, each bright as a flame, stood out against the dull sky as though trying to substitute for the absent sun. It was still early enough: whole families strolled together, the parents arm in arm, gazing with benevolence at their vivacious offspring.

A little girl, a few steps from Lucy, crouched down and gingerly held out a handful of hazelnuts towards a red squirrel. He went to her, cautious, many hesitations disrupting his lightning-quick movements; meanwhile she remained motionless, putting all of her strength and concentration in this feat of patience. Finally one hazelnut was snatched from her palm by two tiny paws. The imp was so delighted she could not contain a cheerful, victorious cry. The squirrel scuttled off. Lucy smiled.

Perhaps this was an accurate image, she mused, of her own fate. Perhaps, like this child, she’d frightened happiness away with unrestrained elation.

Paul Carlos David Emanuel had been only forty-three years of age, and Lucy twenty-seven, when the sea storm had robbed them both of their future. She had not clearly stated it in the tale of her formative years, preferring instead to _imply _a tragic outcome to their engagement, and let the hypothetical reader draw his or her own conclusion. She was not certain, even now, that she could suffer any introspective ponderings upon the event. She had survived her pain’s paroxysm; she had resisted and vanquished the temptation of self-annihilation; she had looked upon the most fatal of sins, and turned away triumphant.

He had died before marrying her. To the world she was still, and forever, Miss Snowe. The hope of his return having deserted her, she had wound up sworn, and forever bound – for better or for worse – to Solitude.

With a sigh, she walked (more slowly now, more calmly) to an empty bench, and sat. Her thoughts were distracting her from the beauty of her surroundings; yet although she regretted it, she could not avoid it. She had anticipated that state of mental unrest. Now that it was come, she must let it follow its course. Let it take its momentary hold. There would be another time for rest, and for peace.

Solitude…  such was the companion to whose ministration Paul’s passing had left Lucy Snowe.

Solitude, in those days, was already well-known to her, for he had watched her every step since her untimely orphanage. And he had been a most unreliable spouse, one day gentle as a deer, the next more reckless and brutal than a rabid hound. And for the few moments of joy he had bestowed upon her, he had demanded as a price days, weeks, months of a sorrow so deep Lucy had often been driven to regard her own survival – and enduring sanity – as no less than a miracle.

For a little over three years, Paul’s affection, Paul’s words, Paul’s presence – through his regular, long, loving letters – had shielded her from her pitiless tormentor. With the news of Paul’s death, Solitude had surfaced to claim ownership of her once more; and Lucy, in the midst of her mourning, had refused. Never would she bow to that tyrant; never would Solitude again extend his rule over her heart. She would not allow it.

The decision had been made quietly, almost incidentally, one April morning. After a long winter of agonizing grief, she had seen the first stirrings of spring as an insult, an outrage to her bereavement. The powdery snow seeming to masquerade as pale ashes, the merciful night so prompt to suppress the rare glints of sunlight – these were manifestations fitting the condition of Lucy’s heart. But those blooming flowers, those young leaves, those birds rousing her as they sang of life’s renewal… she could not abide them; they disrupted her wake with blasphemous mockery.

She had left her bed and stood at her window in silent, desperate rage, gazing upon the garden of her small school – Paul’s school. The sun was high already, though it was not late. Its light painted the blades of grass a vivid, radiant green; the small insects under its rays shone like specks of gold. The sky was of a blue so flawless the colour appeared imbued with a life of its own.

She knew Paul would have enjoyed the sight. He would have stood next to her – there, she had reflected, with a glance to her left, where she saw no-one – and he would have revelled in it, as he revelled, always, in any instance of beauty they were ever blessed with. Had he been with her at that very instant, he too would have noticed the luminous hue of the grass; he might have pointed out, with tranquil humour, the graceful ballet of the _moucherons_. He would have smiled, and loved it, as she did.

But instead of hurting her, she realised – instead of torturing her with tantalising notions of what could have been, yet never again would be – the idea had soothed her.

She had opened her window, to let in the chirping of the birds which suddenly bore her no more enmity; she had turned away and settled at her desk. She had chosen a clean, blank page, dipped her quill in fresh ink, and endeavoured to do what she had done with faultless constancy since Paul Emanuel’s departure: she had written to him.

That posthumous letter had been the first of many.

The absence of response did not alleviate her need to lay down in words what she had made a habit of expressing in their correspondence during his stay in Basseterre. The substance of her days. Insignificant sightings she gathered from reality; sentences and concepts (in books and in daily discourse) she deemed worthy of attention – and which she had long since begun to notice and value for her beloved reader’s sake, rather than her own. It was the perspective of sharing life with him which gave it all of its meaning; and though his body now rested at the bottom of the sea – though his soul was with God – Lucy had found neither the strength, nor the will, to alter the workings of her mind in accordance to those facts.

She had continued, after the loss of him had become both total and permanent, to look upon the world in the same manner. The splendours of nature reached her heart only when she imagined ways of capturing them for him; verses of poetry, when she quoted them to him. The naked, black branches of the sleeping trees lined with a coat of white in the dead of winter; the Zenith summer sunlight, implacable, and the high-up breeze that made nature whisper; even those falling leaves, she reflected, drawn back to the present for a short while; every season’s gorgeous shades. And the intimate glow of a small candlelight. The purring of a kitten on her lap. The scent of clementines, the warmth of a porcelain teacup underneath her fingers, the thick, woollen shawl around her shoulders. The stubborn trilling of a cricket late in the evening; morning dew on a spider’s web; a copper-coloured moon, the sound of the rain, and the treasures her youngest pupils sometimes left as offerings on her desk (an oddly shaped rock, a dried flower, an apple or a feather); all of it – _all_ belonged to him.

As did her contentment before every student’s progress. The satisfaction she drew from the school’s flourishing success. Her legitimate pride when her girls, having become women – and mothers – in turn, brought her their own daughters to be taught. These greater joys, more abstract, were just as magnified by his virtual appreciation of them as were the minute details of each day’s simple beauty.

She had written about them, year after year. She had written him, faithfully, tirelessly – she had shared everything, perhaps with more abandon, more trust than she might have awarded any living mate. The memoirs she had just completed led to – and ended with – the very moment she had undertaken this practice : the rest of her life needed not be recounted again. It was there, in her letters.

To the face of anyone who caught her writing them, she had called them her ‘journal’. The lie might have been a technicality to them; to her, it was fundamental. She was not writing for herself. With each sentence she bore him in mind; of each syllable, he was the addressee, in purpose if not in fact.

Sitting still on her bench, her weary hands wrapped around her walking stick, Lucy looked up; above her a magpie had taken sudden flight and given its sharp, laughter-like cry. The sky was darkening. Soon it would be night. Soon she would rise and return to the Faubourg Clotilde. She was almost finished – almost at peace again.

Almost ready.

Paul Emanuel had died; her love for him throve on. And so did the pure light it had shed on her existence – the light which had forever driven Solitude away. This secret bond – and Paul himself – had been her _raison d’être_. She had given herself – her heart and intellect, her words and perceptions, her loyalty and devotion – to a ghost. For decades, she had loved a delusion. She had been married fifty years to a mirage. She had written letters never to be answered. She had spoken to walls, to thin air, to silence.

Yet she had been happy; searching for regrets, she encountered none.

It was time. Leaning on her cane for support, Lucy stood. She had given orders for a fire to be lit in her bedroom, at dusk. She had no clear idea how long her task would take – how many pages, how many sheets of paper – hundreds? Thousands? But all must disappear. All must be gone before her time came to depart. Tonight, she would erase every trace of her unrequited correspondence; perhaps the fire and the smoke would carry her words, at long last, to their recipient, that he might read them before their final reunion.

To the world, she would leave the story of her first years in Villette, which she had just endowed with its _point final_. To Paul Emanuel, she offered all the rest. Upon him she confered all her other writings; those were his; his, alone. Tonight, she would seal this in fire.

With an effort, Lucy faced the trees one last time – their colour seemed to fade in the growing obscurity. As did the laughter and the voices – by and by the others were retiring to the warmth of their home. Immobile and grave, the old woman gave her silent farewell to the fall. To the world which she had loved through Paul, and whose magnificence she had so loyally transcribed for him. All was finished, now; she would never write again; and as she crossed the gates, leaving the park, a certainty dawned upon her. Here, at the twilight of her days, only Paul Emanuel remained. He was the one; the sole presence, the single thought Lucy would carry within her to the end.

To him, she had never said – and never would she say – farewell.


End file.
